Tag: Ben McAdams

It’s Election Day on this fine November 6, 2018. We’ll be updating this live blog throughout the day. [7:35pm] – Fox News called the House for the Democrats. I anticipate we’ll see a reverse of the Gingrich House of the 90s. Investigation after investigation after investigation. – Beau Sorensen [7:20pm] – I think the Senate results are showing that the Kavanaugh hearings backfired on Democrats and that from an electoral standpoint Republicans were right to push him through. It told Republicans they needed to get out and keep the Senate in GOP…

Updated with statements from House Democratic Leadership, Speaker Greg Hughes, and Justin Miller’s resignation statement. With DA Troy Rawlings announcing charges today, Justin Miller‘s resignation resigned at 9:30 AM from the Utah House of Representatives may be imminent, ending the saga that began with a recording by Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams one year ago. Sources indicate that the Davis County prosecutor will announce that Miller will plead guilty to communications fraud. Miller was accused of stealing approximately $30,000 from the McAdams for Mayor campaign while he was campaign manager. In a recording made…

Salt Lake County elected officials have talked about “reinventing” the justice system for nearly the entire time I have lived in the county. And yet, here we are a decade later, and they still want to keep a tax that has lived its life paying down a bond debt. We keep talking about reinvention, but taxes aren’t all that new an idea. This week, Salt Lake County working on extending a tax originally used to build a new jail in 1995. “In 1995, Salt Lake County voters approved a 20-year bond…

Quick note to Salt Lake County employees: No one is paid what they think they’re worth. But unless your last name is Messi, that will always be the case. The other thing is that government work has always been about reasonable pay and awesome benefits. If you’re still there in this Utah economy, things ain’t so bad. (Trib) • Max Roth sits down with Sen. Mike Lee to talk politics. The topics are pretty standard: His sparring with Chris Christie, friendship with presidential candidates, and gay marriage. The real eye-opener…

I feel like a hypocrite. If a story had broken last week about a Republican political operative who had been accused of stealing somewhere between $24,000 and $34,0000 from a campaign he was managing, I would have been all over that. Especially if said operative was also a state representative. And an admission on tape of said impropriety would be the icing on the cake. Throw in a counter-charge from said operative-turned-legislator of possible impropriety involving rental of office space by the person he allegedly stole the money from, and…

Last week, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams released a seven month old recording of Representative Justin Miller effectively admitting to stealing over $30,000. Justin Miller should not resign as a member of the Utah House of Representatives. Yet. Let me explain. I realize that this is obvious as it relates to McAdams (who is more the victim in this case, albeit a victim that has waited the better part of a year to tell anyone), but it’s a little less obvious for Miller. After all, Miller is either a dreadful accountant,…

Utah is no stranger to elected officials forced to resign under a cloud of controversy. There is, however, a pretty stark difference in how they do it. Most recently, we saw John Swallow forced to finally resign as Attorney General as the evidence piled up that he ran a pay-to-play operation inherited from mentor and former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. It took ten full months of near-daily bombshells in the news for him to make this decision. During that time employee morale sank and his office accomplished little. The scandal meant he…

So – the D’s are on the hot seat right now, as Rep. Justin Miller has a criminal investigation underway looking at his alleged slight of hand and some thirty grand gone missing from his previous employer. He’s no Jean Valjean needing bread to feed his sister’s starving child. Apparently, he needed wanted the money to set up shop as a Democratic campaign consultant. In Utah. Now it might just be me, but there are a lot of things that are easier and have a much better chance of success than being…

Utah blindsided by another political scandal File this under: “Things That Would Have Been Nice To Know Last October.” Wednesday morning, Utah woke up to another political bombshell. Accused of stealing $30,000 in campaign funds, Rep. Justin Miller, a first-term member of the Utah House, was fired from his job working for Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams. In addition to working as an adviser to McAdams, Miller had previously been McAdams campaign manager. Oh, and P.S.: Miller was fired in October of 2014. In a tit-for-tat, Miller accused McAdams of firing him…